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City staff working with architects on design for new police, fire station

Huntsville Item (TX)

Feb. 25--Throughout last year, the Huntsville City Council made strides in a multimillion-dollar project to upgrade and renovate the city's water and wastewater facilities as part of three separate bond projects approved by the voters in 2015.

During last Tuesday's meeting, council members officially got another bond project underway after approving to enter into a contract with Architects Design Group for the design of a new facility to house the Huntsville Police and Fire departments.

"Our council authorized to execute the contract with the architecture firm and we are working on finalizing that now," interim city manager Aron Kulhavy said on Friday afternoon. "It is expected for the design of these facilities to take around 12 months, and it'll probably be a year from now before we have full construction plans. We should have some drawings and schematics and partial plans well in advance of that. I don't know how long that will take at this time."

In 2015, Huntsville Police Chief Kevin Lunsford and Fire Chief Tom Grisham gave tours of both the Huntsville Police Department and Fire Station No. 2 to the public to illustrate issues that were plaguing both facilities.

Both facilities were initially constructed for other uses, with the fire station being used as a community pool and the police building as a bank. In addition, both buildings faced increasing issues due to aging, available space for personnel and equipment, as well as not being able to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and more.

Huntsville Police Chief Kevin Lunsford said the needs of remained for both facilities, and that city staff members will be heavily involved throughout the design process to ensure that all needs of both departments are met in the new facilities.

"We will be working with them every step of the way," Lunsford said. "From the initial design phases all the way up through construction and completion of the building. Our goal, and their goal, is to have our employees heavily involved every step of the way."

During the Feb. 8 meeting, council members voted 6-1 in favor of accepting the Walker County Hospital District's counter offer to sell the old Ella Smither Geriatric Center property for $2.25 million.

Kulhavy said staff is currently in negotiations but that the city intends to move forward with the purchase of the property, which sits at the corner of 11th Street and Avenue O.

"It will be within the next 60 days," Kulhavy said. "We intend to move forward with the purchase of that property. We're in our due diligence phase of doing the survey of the property and the environment to make sure there isn't anything drastic on that property that would prohibit from us doing the facility on there."

Due to the placement of the center along one of Huntsville's main roads, a few members of the community have been skeptical about emergency vehicles being able to exit the facility during peak hours of traffic.

Lunsford explains that the architects have kept that in mind when looking at designing access points for the property.

"We've discussed that heavily with the fire chief and the architect. One of the things is that the fire trucks are pretty large, but when you get those you can get a schematic. That shows the turning radius of the truck, so we've provided that to the architect and they've been able to overlay that over the various intersections around there. Part of what the architects do with any design of a property is they design access points to make that easier."

So far, there have been no decisions made on whether there will be one main complex or two separate buildings on the property. Lunsford said that there are pros and cons to both options, but that the location allows both of the departments to be more centrally located, allowing quicker response times.

"For a fire station, we are more restricted where we can put fire stations because of the ISO (insurance service office) ratings. Firefighters are responding from the station, so it has to be centrally located to meet those requirements. There are only so many locations you can move a fire station. You can legitimately place a police station anywhere because the officers, unlike fire, are not generally responding from the station. They are assigned patrol beats and they're out in their district and they respond from that area. Firefighters are responding from a central location, so in order to maintain our ISO ratings there are only so many places we can place that. The goal is to keep it close to the center of town so that the response times are a lot quicker."